Marble's Secrets Part I: Behind the Scenes of Marble...

If you've ever followed KDE 4 development then you've probably heard about Marble. Marble is a virtual globe which displays the earth. So Marble can be used as a nice digital replacement for your desktop globe at home where you can look up places.

But wait! There's more to it: Actually these days Marble can also display flat maps (thanks to Carlos Licea), can show different "map themes" and can serve as a Qt4-widget as well as an application! This means that as a programmer you can use Marble in your very own project as a map widget (License: LGPL). Marble was designed to run on any device and on any operating system supported by Qt4 without any further requirements. You can download the latest version of Marble together with KDE 4.0.1 here (It's part of the KDE-EDU module).

How Marble stores texture data

If you start Marble you might realize that the startup time is pretty good: It usually takes maybe 2-5 secs to start Marble (and we are working on improving that dramatically). If you zoom into the earth you might notice that Marble doesn't get slower while zooming in. Looking at the amount of memory being used up you will also see that memory numbers don't change either. No matter how much you zoom in it's as little as 65-100MB which is pretty lean compared to other virtual globes.

Among other concepts this is being accomplished by loading the map piece by piece. Marble uses a concept that is very popular among virtual globes: Quadtiles. In fact we are using the most simple form of Quadtiles compared to other more sophisticated solutions. We decided to do so for reasons of pragmatism and in order to keep things easy to understand for people who want to contribute to Marble.

More in Tux Machines

With only two days left until the upcoming Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system hits the Final Beta milestone, developers are still working on adding finishing touches to this release, and they've again improved the Ubuntu Dock.

NethServer's Alessio Fattorini just informed us today about the availability of the first Beta release of the upcoming NethServer 7.4 Linux server-oriented operating system, which is based on CentOS 7.4 and comes with various improvements.

Firefox takes a Quantum leap forward with new developer edition

Earlier this year we wrote about Project Quantum, Mozilla's work to modernize Firefox and rebuild it to handle the needs of the modern Web.
Today, that work takes a big step toward the mainstream with the release of the new Firefox 57 developer edition. The old Firefox developer edition was based on the alpha-quality Aurora channel, which was two versions ahead of the stable version. In April, Mozilla scrapped the Aurora channel, and the developer edition moved to being based on the beta channel. The developer edition is used by a few hundred thousand users each month and is for the most part identical to the beta, except it has a different theme by default—a dark theme instead of the normal light one—and changes a few default settings in ways that developers tend to prefer.

Latest News

Security: Deloitte, Ransomware, Equifax, Denmark, and macOS 0-Day

Hackers [sic] are said to have accessed confidential emails and plans of Deloitte's blue-chip clients, along with usernames, passwords, IP addresses, architectural diagrams for businesses and health information.

Equifax's massive data breach has claimed another victim - Richard Smith, the company's CEO and Chairman of the Board. Equifax announced that Smith is retiring from his role at the company, effective Sept. 26.
"The cybersecurity incident has affected millions of consumers, and I have been completely dedicated to making this right," Smith stated. "At this critical juncture, I believe it is in the best interests of the company to have new leadership to move the company forward."
Equifax announced on Sept. 7 that it was the victim of a data breach the exposed personally identifiable information on 143 million Americans. The company initially reported that it first became aware of the breach on July 29, though subsequent reports have alleged that the company was breached as early as March.

Denmark’s Ministry of Finance is to finalise Denmark’s national strategy for cyber and information security. The ministry recently took over coordination of the plans, which previously were being prepared by the Ministry of Defence. The strategy is to be presented early next year, reports Denmark’s Agency for Digitisation (Digitaliseringsstyrelsen - DIGST).

There's a vulnerability in High Sierra and earlier versions of macOS that allows rogue applications to steal plaintext passwords stored in the Mac keychain, a security researcher said Monday. That's the same day the widely anticipated update was released.
The Mac keychain is a digital vault of sorts that stores passwords and cryptographic keys. Apple engineers have designed it so that installed applications can't access its contents without the user entering a master password. A weakness in the keychain, however, allows rogue apps to steal every plaintext password it stores with no password required. Patrick Wardle, a former National Security Agency hacker who now works for security firm Synack, posted a video demonstration here.

Facebook Licence-Patents Debacle

Thirty-five days after publicly stating, in response to objections from the Apache Software Foundation among others, that the company would not be re-licensing its React library, Facebook on Friday announced that it was re-licensing its React library. It was a surprising but welcome reversal for many in the industry, including Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg.
Ten days ago, Mullenweg published a piece that was at once understanding and blunt announcing that React would be excised from WordPress related projects. The problem was not Automattic – their general counsel saw little problem with the license – but given the breadth of WordPress’ distribution, the decision was made to remove the software because of the uncertainties surrounding its license. As bad as it was being banished from Apache Software Foundation projects, this was worse. Depending on whose numbers you use, WordPress can account for something close to one in four websites.
Given such extensive and escalating costs, the burden of proving the offsetting benefits to a patent clause required by virtually no one else in the industry presumably became too great, at which point the only rational decision would be to re-license the asset – difficult as such backtracking may have been.

Firefox Quantum

Earlier this year we wrote about Project Quantum, Mozilla's work to modernize Firefox and rebuild it to handle the needs of the modern Web.
Today, that work takes a big step toward the mainstream with the release of the new Firefox 57 developer edition. The old Firefox developer edition was based on the alpha-quality Aurora channel, which was two versions ahead of the stable version. In April, Mozilla scrapped the Aurora channel, and the developer edition moved to being based on the beta channel. The developer edition is used by a few hundred thousand users each month and is for the most part identical to the beta, except it has a different theme by default—a dark theme instead of the normal light one—and changes a few default settings in ways that developers tend to prefer.

Engines are important, both in cars and in browsers. That’s why we’re so revved up this morning – we’re releasing the Beta of a whole new Firefox, one that’s powered by a completely reinvented, modernized engine. Since the version number – 57 – can’t really convey the magnitude of the changes we’ve made, and how much faster this new Firefox is, we’re calling this upcoming release Firefox Quantum.